I love a good (bad?) pun.

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Beverage: Christmas Blend tea

Deb

It's not that bad, for snow.

Tuesday, we received, at least at my house, a foot of snow. Of course, that's not nearly as bad as the east coast and, actually, I would have liked that kind of snowfall. Yesterday and today, it's been clear blue skies for part of the day. Reflected off the pristine snow, the outside has a charmed look to it. By week's end, the snow in places will be black or brown from road grime and the inevitable freezing and thawing of the push toward spring.

A couple of us were told to come in and sit in the office on Tuesday. At 11, the boss called and, because his was the only phone call we had taken all morning, the office was closed and we were sent home.

Driving home wasn't as bad as these photos may appear. The pavement was wet from street traffic as well as the wet snow.





You just have to drive slower than you would on dry pavement. People who have never driven in this panic. If they have an SUV, they drive too fast. If they don't have an SUV, they drive 10 mph. I just want to yell, "If you are that scared, go home and don't leave your house until April!"

I've turned off the main drag and am heading into the neighborhood I call home. This street had been plowed, which was nice.








I am now 3 blocks from the house. Notice how the clear street has given way to snow covered with tire tracks. In these budget crunching times, plowing the streets a bit less saves overtime and gas money. We may know how to clear it better than our friends in Baltimore, but that doesn't mean we have an unlimited amount of funds to spend on snow removal. Coming towards me is a pickup truck from the city to which a blade has been affixed. The regular city snowplows were off keeping the main roads clear.

I'm almost home here. My driveway is almost across from that red car. The people across the street always have people coming and going and they will often park across from my drive or in front of my house. This can make it more than a little difficult to pull into the drive as I am trying not to hit something.

This was only 4 of the foot of snow received. It was coming down steady at this point but the heaviest snow had not yet arrived. I did go out and shovel the deck, front steps and part of the walk. The cats are still scared when I come in after shoveling. They still haven't gotten used to the foot stamping outside and the clatter of dragging the shovel in and through the house. It will take them a good 5-10 minutes to come out from whatever place they have gone to hide.

And I am very glad they are indoor cats at times like these. I can leave the back door open while I shovel the deck and not have to worry about trying to tempt someone back inside who decided to check out the back yard even with a foot of snow.

Beverage: Earl Grey Tea

Deb

Thanks is not adequate enough.

I've often said that although there are many words in this great English language of ours, there are times when there just isn't a word to adequately convey what you want to say. This is one of those times.

I came home from work last night and shoveled off the deck and the front steps out to the mailbox. I wasn't going to shovel much beyond the mailbox but decided the milkman might appreciate a cleared walk to the milk box. So, I shoveled to the sidewalk. That was a good thing because it was warm enough, still at 4:15 to start melting the stuff on the deck and the front porch. I'll have a go at the driveway apron off and on over the weekend.

I brought in the mail and the above letter was in it. It's postmarked "Chicago" and had been mailed on Tuesday, during the snowstorm. There wasn't a return address but it was kind of fat. Curious, I opened it. Inside was the yellow piece of paper shown above, carefully folded around the Target gift certificate shown at the bottom right. The gift certificate is for a rather large sum.

I was speechless. I stood in my living room with tears running down my face. Whoever did this knows my name and address, knows my finances haven't been the best and knows I love to shop at Target and I can get pretty much anything I need at a Target, even fresh fruits and vegetables if I go to a SuperTarget.

There just are no words. I don't have any clue who might have done this and I know that's exactly how they want it. I will sit down with my list tonight and make a top 10 items I need and plan to visit the store on Saturday. I am so touched and so very grateful.

"Thank you" seems wholly inadequate.

Beverage: Earl Grey tea

Deb

No, I did not feel it.

I awoke to something mumbled about an earthquake. Honestly, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the reports. The earth is a vibrant entity. It moves. I had no idea.

4 a.m. this morning there was a rumble. I didn't feel it. Rodney says he felt it and it woke him. It doesn't seem to have shaken anything in my house, at least nothing looked awry when I got up. Perhaps the cats noticed things but they didn't become agitated and wake me up, although this could explain why Pilchard came meowing into the bedroom this morning wanting ear scratches. She just doesn't currently do that.

I walked into the office and the boss says, "Did you feel it?" "Feel what?" was my response, which garnered some rather incredulous looks from my co-workers. We got a foot of snow yesterday that blew around overnight. I'm more concerned with getting out of my driveway.

Yes, for those of you who have emailed me, four of the seismographs my company has in the western suburbs of Chicago picked up the quake. Above is the record from one of the machines.

On the left is a plot of the data graphed to the United States Bureau of Mines' (defunct and rolled into the Department of Interior) "Z" curve. This graph, based upon decades of gathering data from mining, says if quarry blasting stays below the lines shown, the chance of doing even cosmetic damage to a building is essentially nil. Everyone uses this and it has been proven again and again to be the platinum standard for judging intensity of blasting operations.

On the right is the actual waveform record of the quake. All vibrations have 3 components, a side-to-side motion, an up and down motion and the motion of the vibration waves as they pass by the sensor. The purple line above is sound and we aren't concerned with that here. The right side recording would be that machine everyone sees, the one that makes the up and down lines on paper when there is an earthquake, except all our data is stored electronically.

Our machines are located approximately 9 miles east of the quake's epicenter. We've been fortunate before. In the 10 years I've worked for this company, this would be the third earthquake we've captured. The first one I remember was in June of 2004. The second was in April of 2008. It's always interesting to see what our machines capture when this happens.

So how does what you see correspond to the widely used Richter Scale. The Richter Scale is a measure of damage. The bigger the number, the more likely there will be damage. Our machines are not a measure of damage. They measure the velocity of the vibration, the displacement of the ground as measured in inch per second. We deal with pieces of inches. Our machines showed the quake to measure 0.393 inch per second in displacement or velocity.

The other component of a vibration is its amplitude or frequency. We explain that by having you visualize a still pond. You toss a rock into this still pond. The resulting waves emanating from that rock can be thought of as vibration waves. The distance between waves is the frequency. The height is the intensity. All you see when a machine goes crazy and scribbles frantically across a piece of paper, is the intensity. That's all people really care about, even though you are less likely to notice a stronger vibration if it doesn't take its time to pass you by.

And that's the key to earthquakes, they take a long time to finish. Mother Nature releases a lot of energy over a long duration. This energy is released in waves that are spread out. You feel the shaking for a "long" time. One of the structural engineers in my company did an analysis of blasting vibrations versus earthquake vibrations and came to the conclusion that to produce even a 1 on the Richter scale would take millions and millions of pounds of explosives. Beyond a nuclear weapon, it's impossible.

Earthquakes are in the low frequency area of vibrations. You can see all the dots on the left graph clustered at the bottom and near the 10. This is the area where people are really going to feel things. The waves are not moving fast and most people's perception is in this range. If you can visualize this, the front part of a structure is moving up while the back part is down. You've seen this as an anchored boat goes up and down with a water wave. As the parts of a building are anchored, they have little flexibility to move. This up and down motion, called racking and sheering, twists the building components apart. That's what does the damage and, in earthquake prone areas, what buildings must be designed to either absorb or move with.

In the end, for the next few days, we are popular within the company, as offices become aware of the earthquake and call us asking if we recorded it. I kind of wish I would have been awakened by it. I've monitored enough quarry blasts that I'd like the comparison.

Beverage: Coke

Deb